CHANGELOG.md

Changelog

54.0.1

Bug fixes

• Fixed a reported bug where stats are being displayed for the wrong song and chart. [#822], by @dtinth

54.0.0

Bug fixes

• Fixed a problem where the old version of the game file is incorrectly cached, leading to an error: “Failed to load environment bundle.” Also improved the error message that displays to suggest the user to perform a hard refresh (by holding down the Shift key while clicking the Reload button). [#809, #818], by @dtinth

Internals

• Made further improvements to the codebase. Upgraded React, Redux, and React Redux to the latest version, migrated the state management code from a bespoke helper library to Redux Toolkit, and converted many files into TypeScript along the way. [#805, #808, #810, #811, #812, #813, #814, #815, #816, #817], by @MikuroXina
• Added some more automated test cases. [#806], by @dtinth
• Refactored online code and replaced remaining code that uses Bacon.js with RxJS. [#807], by @MikuroXina

53.3.0

Internals

• Revamped the deployment pipeline to streamline the release process. [#803], by @dtinth

53.2.0

Internals

• Refactored more components into TypeScript. [#793, #795], by @MikuroXina
• Revamped the continuous delivery pipeline to streamline the release process. [#794, #799, #800, #801], by @dtinth

v53.1 (2022-12-29)

Internals

• Modernized the codebase by upgrading dependencies, converting React components from JavaScript classes to TypeScript functions. #791, by @MikuroXina

v53 (2022-11-28)

Improvements

• Bemuse Online Ranking is back. The online ranking backend has been revamped with a more modern tech stack. We also migrated to another authentication provider (Firebase). Unfortunately, all passwords has been reset. Please reset your password by specifying a blank password when logging in. #785, by @dtinth

• Added support for .flac keysounds in custom songs. Note that this only works on browsers that natively support FLAC files. #786, by @dtinth

Internals

• The build system has been upgraded from webpack 4 to webpack 5. Huge, huge thanks to MikuroXina for making this happen! #780, by @MikuroXina

v52.2.4 (2022-11-06)

Internals

• Improved the code that handles asynchronous processing to more closely follow latest coding practices and removed a 3rd party dependency.

  For developers using Bemuse’s published npm libraries — there is a breaking change in the bms library where the readAsync function no longer accepts a callback and now returns a Promise instead. #782, by @MikuroXina

v52.2.3 (2022-11-05)

Improvements

• Fixed a problem where the project documentation website cannot be accessed when a Service Worker is installed. #778, by @dtinth

v52.2.2 (2022-10-23)

Internals

• Added Semgrep to our toolchain to further help us maintain consistent thoughout codebase. #775, by @dtinth

Improvements

• Fixed a regression where the sign in and sign up function doesn’t work. #776, by @dtinth

v52.2.1 (2022-10-22)

This is a maintenance release, mostly consists of internal tooling updates and code clean-up. If you encounter any gameplay issues, please report them to our issue tracker.

Internals

• Upgraded ESLint and plugins to latest version. #771, by @dtinth
• Removed dependency on the co library. #772, by @MikuroXina

v52.2 (2022-10-21)

This is a maintenance release, mostly consists of internal tooling updates and code clean-up. If you encounter any gameplay issues, please report them to our issue tracker.

Internals

• Fixed a problem where the project contains multiple versions of dependencies, upgraded CircleCI build image, upgraded and migrated from deprecated dependencies. #749, by @MikuroXina
• Migrated the data update library from updeep to immer. #755, by @cxong
• Upgraded the project website to Docusaurus v2. #769, by @MikuroXina
• Consolidated build system on GitHub Actions. #770, by @dtinth

v52.1.2 (2022-10-17)

This is a maintenance release, mostly consists of internal tooling updates and code clean-up.

Internals

• Fixed some bugs about HTML/CSS as reported by sonarcloud. #752, by @MikuroXina
• Upgraded the automated test tooling. Bemuse now uses Playwright to run its smoke test. #766, by @dtinth
• Updated community health files on the GitHub repository. #767, by @sb-decoder

v52.1.1 (2022-10-16)

This is a maintenance release, mostly consists of internal tooling updates and code clean-up.

Internals

• Improved error handling code in audio handling code. #751, by @MikuroXina
• Fixed a link in the README file. #754, by @sikgyu
• Fixed high CPU usage when developing the project inside VS Code. #758, by @dtinth
• Added links to contributors list to README file. #759, by @Darkrider0007
• Started migrating the delivery pipeline to be automated with GitHub Actions. #762, by @doublevcodes
• Improved build performance in GitHub Actions. #764, by @dtinth

v52.1 (2022-01-01)

New stuff

• Added 1 new song.

Others

• Added a BMS previewer for charters. You can access by going to https://bemuse.ninja/?mode=previewer. #747, by @dtinth

v52 (2021-12-20)

New stuff

• HD-BGA support for BMS files. Bemuse now tries to load BGAs in BMS files when an .mp4 and .webm files are provided.

  

  In prior versions, Bemuse did not support background animation (BGA) video for the BMS format, because most BMS archives at that time comes with low-resolution (256x256) video files. These files commonly use the MPG, AVI, or WMV format, which cannot be played on the web.

  In 2016, the bmson project introduced recommendations for high-definition BGAs in bmson files. The specification recommended BGA files to be in MP4 or WebM format. These formats can be played on the web and it is supported natively in Bemuse. So since 2016, Bemuse supports BGA for bmson, but not BMS.

  In 2018, beatoraja introduced support for high-definition BGAs in BMS files. BMS authors can put bga.mp4 and bga.mpg files side-by-side and bga.mp4 file will take precedence over bga.mpg even if bga.mpg is specified in the BMS file (for backwards-compatibility with LR2).

  In 2021, it is now more common for BMS authors to distribute BMS archives with BGA files in both .mp4 and .mpg format. Therefore, Bemuse now follows this behavior by beatoraja. #745, by @dtinth

v51.3 (2021-10-31)

Improvements

• Autoplay mode: If you hold down Alt key while clicking the chart button to start a game, Bemuse will enter into Autoplay mode where notes will be played automatically. The UI will clearly mark the game as autoplayed both in-game and in the result screen. #740, by @dtinth

v51.2 (2021-10-30)

Internals

• Detect song folder removals when rescanning the custom songs folder. #734, by @fResult
• Updated build tooling to generate more modern code for better performance and easier debugging. #736, by @dtinth

Improvements

• Reduced sound volume by 4dB to prevent sound distortion in Windows. If the game sounds quieter, please increase your sound volume. #735, by @dtinth
• Fixed a problem on Microsoft Surface devices where holding a note (in Microsoft Edge) or triggering 2 simultaneous notes (in Google Chrome) triggers a context menu. #737, by @dtinth
• The artists showcase has been updated to reflect the latest song list. #738, by @dtinth

v50.1.1 (2021-10-30)

Internals

• Changed the monorepo manager from Yarn+Lerna to Rush+pnpm. #730, by @dtinth

v50.1 (2021-10-28)

New stuff

• 2 songs have been added to the Music Server.

• Random songs of the day. Bemuse will show a random selection of 3 songs on each day to help you discover more songs. #725, by @dtinth

Improvements

• Upgraded Pixi.js to version 4.8.9. #724, by @dtinth
• Increased the delay after finishing song before displaying the results screen from 1 second to 3 seconds to give more time for BG animations. #726, by @dtinth

Internals

• Fixed GitHub Actions workflow to upload code coverage data properly. #727, by @dtinth
• Migrated some more jobs from CircleCI to GitHub Actions. #728, by @dtinth

v50 (2021-10-26)

New stuff

• 4 songs have been added to the Music Server.

• For creators: The tool to prepare songs and manage a Bemuse Music Server has been rewritten from scratch to be easier to use. In previous versions, to set up a Bemuse Music Server, you would have to install a lot of programs and use the command line tools. Now you can prepare songs and set up a Bemuse Music Server from your web browser. Check out the documentation for more info. #721, by @dtinth

Internals

• Migrated some workflows from CircleCI to GitHub Actions to speed up builds. #718, by @vtno

v49.2 (2021-10-24)

Improvements

• You can now play custom BMS songs on your mobile phone. The custom BMS dialog now displays a button to let you pick a file on your device. When you select a BMS archive file (zip/rar/7z), Bemuse will decompress and load the song. It consumes some RAM, and may not work on lower-end devices. #714, by @aj-ya

• The Community FAQ page now contains a list of Bemuse servers. You can check that out if you are looking for more songs to play.

Internals

• Various internal improvements. #715, by @dtinth

v49.1.2 (2021-10-20)

Improvements

• Download retries. When a file failed to download, it will be retried up to 3 times. #712, by @dtinth

• Improved support for loading sound files inside directories. For example, the BMS OF FOON entry “miss” by Yosk! now plays properly on Bemuse.

  Some internal work has also been done to prepare for the ability to separate music servers from music data server, and the codebase has been modernized a little bit. As a result, this version of Bemuse will require a more recent browser: Firefox 69+, Chrome 76+, and Safari 14+. This may affect around 1% of player base, and it is advised to update your browser. If you have an up-to-date browser and you run into issues, please report them either in Issues tracker or Discord. #706, by @dtinth

Internals

• Introduced bemuse-types package to publish type definitions in a music collection. #705, by @dtinth

• Improved the code readability of custom songs folder feature. #699, by @dimitrov-d

• Prepare the codebase for implementing the detection of removed custom song folder and upgraded Prettier to v2. #700, by @dtinth

v49 (2021-10-09)

New stuff

• If you forgot your password you can now reset it. Click the login button without specifying the username or password, then Bemuse will ask for your email. A better UI may be implemented in later releases. #694, by @dtinth

• Feature preview: Custom songs folder.

  Currently, to play custom songs, you must drag the song you want to play into Bemuse window. This can be a bit inconvenient if you have many songs to play.

  This new feature, currently in preview, lets you pick a folder that contains all your custom songs. The folder selection is saved locally, so next time you return to Bemuse your custom songs will be there. Check out the announcement post to find out how to access this feature preview. #695, by @dtinth

v48.5.1 (2021-10-08)

Internals

• Upgraded the build infrastructure to TypeScript 4.4.3 #687, by @dtinth
• Fixed compiler warnings in stylesheet files. #689, by @vishal5251

Improvements

• You can go back to Music Selection Screen when the game fails to load a song. (Previously, the game would softlock.) #690, by @dtinth

v48.5 (2021-07-20)

Others

• Added a Community FAQ page. This page is maintained by the community on Bemuse Discord server and is aimed to answer common questions. If you don’t find your question answered, feel free to ask your questions in #general! #683, by @dtinth

v48.4 (2021-06-05)

Internals

• Upgraded project dependencies so that it can be run on Node 16.3.0. This should make it easier for new developers to get started playing around with the codebase. #679, by @dtinth

v48.3 (2020-05-08)

Internals

• Added a passive web monetization using the upcoming open standard, Web Monetization API, to see if this can potentially help offset server costs. If you are a Coil member, your membership will help support the server costs. As for Bemuse, nothing will go behind a monetization-wall. The game will remain completely free without any ads. #671, by @dtinth

v48.2.1 (2020-05-03)

Internals

• The game code has been moved to the bemuse subdirectory inside the bemusic/bemuse monorepo. This can help streamline future releases. #668, by @dtinth

• Fix broken deployment script.

v48.1 (2020-05-03)

Internals

• You can now develop Bemuse in your web browser, courtesy of GitPod, which provides an on-demand cloud-based environment where all the project dependencies are already installed, usable from your web browser. #666, by @dtinth

v48 (2020-05-03)

New stuff

• Added support to gamepad controllers that sets the axis value in a continuous fashion. Some controllers call this INFINITAS mode. This also adds a new “turntable sensitivity” settings. In addition, if the buttons 8 or 9 are mapped, they will no longer function as a “start” and “select” buttons (to avoid changing speed on a single button on some controllers). #662, by @TsFreddie

Improvements

• Our documentation site is now searchable. Courtesy of Algolia’s DocSearch program. #663, by @s-pace

v47.2 (2020-05-03)

Internals

• Migrate part of the code from co to async functions. (#639, by @TayHobbs; #641, #642, #643, #645, #649, by @mslourens; #646, by @setheal; #652, by @511V41; #656, by @aboudicheng; #657, by @pnkapadia64). #655, by @dtinth

v47.1 (2019-10-04)

Improvements

• Laid groundwork for gradually migrating part of the codebase to MobX (see #573). #572, by @dtinth

v47 (2019-09-29)

New stuff

• Add support for ?archive query flag (requested by @Nekokan) #568, by @dtinth

Internals

• Updated some dependencies in response to GitHub security alerts for vulnerable dependencies. #567, by @dtinth

Improvements

• Fixed a CHANGELOG formatting issue where changelog text is broken into multiple lines when viewed in Bemuse. #569, by @dtinth
• Minor CHANGELOG update: Removed trailing .0.0 in version number. #570, by @dtinth

v46 (2019-09-12)

New stuff

• You can now drop a link to a BMS archive (.zip, .rar) from another web page into the “Custom BMS” panel. When you do it, Bemuse will attempt to download and extract the file. Note that for this to work, the web server that serves the file must set up cross-origin resource sharing to allow Bemuse to download it. Both Dropbox and IPFS gateways has this set up already.

  Dropbox URL normalization code is based on @Nekokan’s Dropbox Replacer, thanks! #554, by @dtinth

Improvements

• Fixed an issue where a player, when playing using a touch screen in 3D mode, cannot touch below canvas to activate the note. #472, by @dtinth
• Fixed an issue where the OGG sound decoder crashes when decoding some OGG files in iOS. #553, by @dtinth

v45.1 (2019-09-02)

Internals

• Upgraded TypeScript to latest version, 3.6.2, and converted some more code that deals with game initialization logic to TypeScript. #549, by @dtinth

v45 (2019-08-31)

New stuff

• Bemuse can now load custom songs directly from .zip, .rar and .7z files. You can now drop an archive file into Bemuse. This is possible thanks to libarchive.js which is a port of libarchive to WebAssembly. #547, by @dtinth

Others

• When playing in 3D mode (e.g. using a touch screen), performing a fast glissando between 2 notes with one column of gap in-between will no longer emit the sound of the gap. For example, given a note pattern 1-3-5-7, you can swipe your finger from 1~7, and the game will suppress the sounds of column 2-4-6. This improves the playing experience in mobile devices. #546, by @dtinth

v44.5 (2019-08-30)

Internals

• Several core objects have been converted to TypeScript to make the game code easier to maintain. This includes Judgments, Game, Player, GameInput, GameState, PlayerState and PlayerStats in the game, and Callbacks, Observable and Progress in the utilities. #544, by @dtinth

v44.4 (2019-08-29)

New stuff

• The TUTORIAL now displays a tooltip that teaches new players how to exit the game. #542, by @dtinth

Internals

• Added release dates to CHANGELOG sections. #541, by @dtinth

v44.3 (2019-08-29)

Internals

• Updated webpack configuration in the main app to allow compiling TypeScript code. Now we can start writing game code using TypeScript! #538, by @dtinth
• Updated the automated release script to remove pre-release version suffix from CHANGELOG entries, further streamlining the release process. #539, by @dtinth

v44.2.4 (2019-08-29)

Internals

• Upgraded to Lerna 3 and switched to Fixed version mode. This means Bemuse’s sub-projects (bms, bmson, bemuse-tools, etc…) will have the same version as the Bemuse game. This makes versioning easier. #536, by @dtinth

v44.1 (2019-08-29)

New stuff

• OGG support is added to iOS and Safari, using @hajimehoshi’s stbvorbis.js library to decode OGG files in-browser. This means that Bemuse no longer relies on proprietary audio file format (m4a) to function in Safari and iOS, and thus:

  • Generating a Bemuse package is faster because m4a files no longer to be generated.

  • Less disk space requirement as only ogg files are needed.

  • A Bemuse package can now be generated on Linux, due to proprietary tools to use Apple’s m4a encoder is no longer needed.

  With this change, creating content for Bemuse will become easier and more accessible! #534, by @dtinth

Internals

• Upgraded React and React DOM to version 16.9.0. #533, by @dtinth

v44 (2019-08-27)

This release contains no new features, just a lot of codebase modernizations.

Internals

• Babel is replaced by TypeScript compiler. Now TypeScript is used to transpile both TypeScript and JavaScript files. #512, by @dtinth

• The whole source tree is automatically formatted using Prettier. #513, by @dtinth

• Lots of old code and unused dependencies have been removed. #516, by @dtinth

• Minor warning fixes. #517, by @dtinth

• Added an end-to-end testing, using Puppeteer. #503, by @dtinth

• Upgraded the project to Node 10. #518, by @dtinth

• Fix a problem where .jsx files do not pass through lint-staged. #519, by @resir014

• Converted bms, bmson, bemuse-notechart, and bemuse-indexer packages to TypeScript. #520, #521, #522, by @dtinth

• Updated service worker code to use serviceworker-webpack-plugin instead of custom service worker hack. #525, by @resir014

• Removed webpack-progress hack. #525, by @resir014

v43 (2018-11-11)

This release contains multiple contributions from the community! Many thanks to everyone who helped contributing to this release.

Fixes and improvements

• Faster IPFS support using Cloudflare’s Distributed Web Gateway. #508, by @dtinth

• Fullscreen now works in more browsers. #505, by @Gluestick

• When calibrating, music preview is now muted. #507, by @Gluestick

• Documentation has been improved.

  • Contribution guidelines have been updated, along with miscellaneous fixes. #496, by @resir014

  • Our Music Server docs has been updated to note that due to our usage of proprietary codec (AAC) for iOS compatibility, Music Servers has to be created from either Windows and Mac machines (#510, by @resir014). Also, some instructions has been made more easy to follow, and a guide to configure an nginx web server (in addition to XAMPP) have been added (#511, by @cenox).

Internals

Our codebase has been modernized and quality improved, thanks to the hard work from our contributors.

• Upgraded many dependencies. #498, by @resir014

• Migraded to Babel 7. #501, by @thakkaryash94

• Fixed a propTypes warning in OptionsInputKey. #506, by @Gluestick

v42 (2018-08-08)

This update took a really long time as I (dtinth) was busy with other things in life. Also, this release contains many internal changes to the code infrastructure, which is, you know, the less exciting parts of the work.

New stuff

• Full-screen button is displayed at the top-right corner inside the game. Automatic full-screen has been removed. #495, by @dtinth

• 3 new songs added. More songs will be added soon, stay tuned.

Improvements

• Improved documentation. Our docs have been split into 3 sections (#489, by @resir014):

  • Users for people who play this game. This section covers the user guide, the game mechanics, and some FAQs.

  • Creators for content creators (bms authors) and people who wants to maintain a music server.

  • Developers for developers who wants to dive into the game’s code.

• Added information on documentation for running a music server on a Windows local machine. #490, by @Coppertine

• Forced encoding. Encoding can be forced by setting the file extension. For example, HYPER.sjis.bms will always be read as Shift-JIS.

Internal changes

• Gone monorepo. 5 packages on npm: bms, bmson, bemuse-notechart, bemuse-indexer and bemuse-tools now lives in this repository.

• Updated Browserslist compatibility table according to blog post “‘last 2 versions’ considered harmful” #483, by @resir014

• Upgraded auth0-js due to security issue. #485, by @resir014

• Improved developer guide for Windows users. #487, by @resir014

API changes

bms@3.0.0

• [Breaking change] Use lib folder to refer to individual module. bms/speedcore → bms/lib/speedcore
• [New feature] Added support parsing .dtx files. bemusic/bms-js#28, by @mugabe
• [Internals] Modernized the source code and moved into bemuse repository.

bms@3.1.0

• [New feature] BMS.Reader.read and BMS.Reader.readAsync now takes an optional options object, allowing you to force file encoding.

bmson@4.0.0

• [Internals] Modernized the source code and moved into bemuse repository.

bemuse-notechart@2.0.0

• [Breaking change] Use lib folder to refer to individual module. bemuse-notechart/loader → bemuse-notechart/lib/loader
• [Internals] Modernized the source code and moved into bemuse repository.

bemuse-notechart@2.1.0

• [Improvement] File encoding can be forced through file name extension.

bemuse-indexer@4.0.0

• [Internals] Modernized the source code and moved into bemuse repository.

bemuse-notechart@4.1.0

• [Improvement] File encoding can be forced through file name extension.

bemuse-tools@3.0.0

• [Internals] Modernized the source code and moved into bemuse repository.

bemuse-tools@3.1.0

• [Bugfix] Removed peer dependencies error.
• [Improvement] File encoding can be forced through file name extension.

v41 — New docs site, Latency calibration fixes, Chrome 66 support, IPFS support (2018-05-07)

New stuff

• New documentation site. The docs site for the Bemuse project can now be found at https://bemuse.ninja/project/. #479, by @resir014

• Experimental support for IPFS. Please read more info about this feature in the issue linked afterwards. #480, by @dtinth

Fixes and improvements

• Fixed a bug that happens in Chrome 66 where a song wouldn’t start due to the new autoplay policy taking effect.

  • By the way, newer versions of Chrome in Android has significantly lower latency. On Android, the latency used to be ~120ms, but now it’s only ~40ms.

• Fixed a long-standing audio latency calibration bug where it would cause the game to go out of sync from the display. #474, by @dtinth

• UI updated for mobile devices. #478, by @dtinth

Internal changes

• Upgraded webpack to v4. #471, by @resir014

v40 — Big update: 3D mode, 7 more songs, and other stuff! (2018-02-13)

New, new stuff!

• 3D mode is out! This mode is recommended for playing on touch screens (e.g. an iPad Pro). This mode only works when Scratch settings is set to off. Video demo

• Added 7 more songs.

• A friendly dialog box appears when you exit the tutorial and encourages you to keep playing other songs, and build up your music gaming skills!

Internal changes

• Improved analytics tracking, using Amplitude. This will help me to gain better insights more easily, which can be useful in improving the game. No personal data is collected.

• Infrastructure and tooling: Upgraded to webpack 3, added prop-types to most components, and other project improvements. Thanks a lot to @resir014 for contributing these improvements!

v38 — Big update! (2017-12-31)

Have a happy new year! This release makes the game easier for beginners.

New stuffs

• Added 5 new songs and more easy charts.

Improved mechanics

• This game mechanics is now easier for beginners. For more information, see the report “Easier timegates for beginners coming to Bemuse”.

Internals

• Updated the project’s infrastructure (e.g. upgraded to latest version of React). Big thanks to help and feedback from @resir014!

v37 (2017-03-11)

Bugfixes

• Scoreboard is back. After a month of downtime or so. Thanks for your patience!

• Speed no longer resets when you hit the replay (F1) button.

• Errors are now displayed when there is a problem loading a custom BMS. (They used to be silently discarded, leading to the dialog keeps loading indefinitely).

Internals

• Upgraded the build infrastructure. webpack 2 and stuffs.

v36 (2016-12-24)

A new feature arrived

• Music previews. Now you’ll hear a preview while selecting songs!

v35 (2016-12-21)

Internals

• Moved the music server. With 44 songs and counting, our music server now contains more than 1GB of data. Since GitHub only allows 1GB, I need to find a new home in order to release more songs.

  Now, the music server is hosted on a DigitalOcean droplet, with performance enhanced by CloudFlare.

  The game itself is still hosted on GitHub.

• Added Bemuse server tool.

v34 (2016-12-06)

New features

• 5-keys inactive column cover. This is the first step to make Bemuse more approachable to beginners. When playing 5-key charts (marked with green color), we will cover the unused columns. We will be improving 5-keys support.

• Expert gauge. When expert gauge is enabled, you will see a gauge at the top of the screen. This brings a challenge — to finish the song with the gauge intact.

Improvements

• Improved offbeat sound. When you trigger the note off-beat, the note would also sound off-pitch. @joezeng contributed a change which makes it sound even more jarring! Enjoy!!!!!!

• Improved offline support. We’ve modernized the code for offline support a bit. This makes the first visit of the game faster.

v33 (2016-09-24)

More features!

• Play area cover. For some players, the play area may be too tall. There is now a new setting that lets you adjust the amount of the play area that will be hidden (covered) from the top (in percentage). If this number is negative, the play area will be pulled up.

• Accuracy and precision in result screen. We now display the accuracy (mean difference) and precision data (standard deviation) of the keypresses in the result screen.

v32 (2016-09-21)

Improvements to existing features

• Improved game restarting. Based on the statistics in the past 3 months, 21.3% of game plays are restarts of the previous game. In this release, I make restarting easier in several ways:
  • Inside game, press F1 to restart. This will immediately restart the game.
  • Inside the result screen, click the chart difficulty button at the top-right corner. This will also immediately restart the game.
  • Faster song loading when playing the same song. In Bemuse, songs are stored in a compressed format and have to be decoded before playing. In this version, Bemuse will temporarily store the decoded data, so that it will load faster if you play the same song again.
• Custom BMS popup will immediately appear when a folder is dragged over the music selection screen. This should make playing custom BMS easier.

v31.2 (2016-09-17)

Improvements

• Improved support for bmson BGAs in Bemuse servers.

Bugfixes

• Fixed a bug where BGAs would display at an incorrect position in different screen resolution.

v31.2 (2016-09-07)

New features

• Support BGAs in bmson files. In this version, there is a caveat when using BGAs in bmson file.
  • Due to current Bemuse architecture, every chart in the same song shares the same BGA. It case of multiple charts with different BGA, the BGA of the song will be selected arbitrarily.
  • Only 1 bga_event allowed, and it is expected to point to a WebM or MP4 file. Otherwise, the BGA is considered invalid and will not be loaded.

v31.1 (2016-06-30)

New stuffs

• Added a home page (which you can see by scrolling down from the title screen). There are still a lot of rooms for improvements. Think of this as an alpha version. Suggestions are welcome. :)

Internals

• Improved analytics tracking to send more useful information. All analytics data are anonymous and are used for the purpose of improving the game.

v31 (2016-06-24)

Announcement of new stuffs!

• Out of beta! I’ve shipped so many beta releases for a year now, and it needs to go out of beta someday… Since jumping major versions are pretty trendy these days, I decided to release version 31.

• BGAs! On new songs, Bemuse will now display a 720p HD background animation. You need a decent computer and a good internet connection for this feature to work smoothly. You can turn it off in the options screen.

  Right now, it is only available in online songs. BGAs in custom songs are not supported yet. Future versions will add support for BGAs inside bmson files. BGAs are encoded in WebM format at resolution of 1280x720, at bitrate of 1500 kbps.

• Auto-velocity! Bemuse now has the auto-velocity option which tries to maintain a consistent note scrolling speed across plays. This means the game will automatically adjust the speed modifier to match the note scrolling speed of the previous song you’ve played.

  For example, if you played a 100bpm song at 4.8x speed, then if you play a 200bpm song, the game will adjust the speed to 2.4x. You can activate this feature in the options screen.

• BMS Search Integration! You can now go to BMS Search page for the selected song from the “Information” tab.

• New Title Screen!

Advanced and developer features…

• Setting the default search text! BMS Search, a BMS database and search engine, has a very convenient link to Bemuse. But you still have to search for the song you want to play. In this version, Bemuse supported the ?grep= URL parameter, which will pre-fill the search text.

  For example, this URL will link directly to a song called “The Heroine Appears.” in METTATUNES event server: https://bemuse.ninja/?server=https://bmson.nekokan.dyndns.info/mettatunes/&grep=the+heroine+appears

• Adding BGAs in music server: Two new keys in README.md front-matter data is added: video_url which specifies the URL to a video file (WebM, 1280x720, 1500kbps) and video_offset which specifies when to start playing the video (in seconds after the song begins).

Internals

• Modernized the codebase! The Bemuse GUI is now based on latest version of React. The web application has been aggressively refactored to use Redux (which leads to cleaner code and easier testability).

v1.0.0-beta.30 (2016-01-02)

New feature

• iPad Pro support.

  Note: Bemuse is very RAM intensive. Before playing, please close other apps and other Safari tabs, and set your screen orientation to portrait.

  When I started developing Bemuse, I call it “a BMS player of the future.” When the beta version was released, the game is barely playable on an iPad Air. Many songs crash the game, and other songs made the very game laggy (running at about 30 fps, which is unacceptable for such rhythm games). This is because of the large amount of sound data, more than an iPad Air can handle (some song take more than 1GB of RAM to play). I just hope that a better tablet will be released in the future.

  But the future is here. iPad Pro comes with 4GB of RAM and an A9 processor, the game can now process up to 200 fps. This is Moore’s law in action. Although most application is allowed to access only 600MB of RAM, Safari does not have this restriction. There is almost no audio latency at all on an iPad Pro. This is the era for web-based applications!

  

  (P.S. Bemuse also works on Microsoft Surface Pro (using Google Chrome), but it has very high audio latency.)

v1.0.0-beta.29 (2015-12-05)

Changes

• Sound volume normalization (online songs only).

  The ReplayGain algorithm is used to normalize the volume of each song. From now on, every song will have roughly the same loudness. Some songs are very loud. As a result, the volume of songs is decreased, on average, by 15%. This only applies to online songs, as the ReplayGain value must be precomputed.

  Bemuse music server authors: To normalize the sound volume, please specify the replaygain: key in the YAML front matter of your song’s README file (example), then run bemuse-tools index again.

• Overall volume decrease.

  Some platforms (e.g. Chrome on Mac OS X) can process audio using 32-bit float format all the way from the browser to the operating system. This means it’s possible to have sounds playing above the full volume without clipping if the system volume is decreased. Other platforms clip the audio signals that exceed the full scale as data leaves the browser to the system. This means the audio will sound distorted, even when the system volume is decreased.

  To resolve this, the overall volume is deceased. For online songs that have replaygain tag added, Bemuse will adjust the volume of the song to give around 6 dB of headroom.

  For custom BMS, there is no precomputed song volume information. In this case, Bemuse reduces the song volume by -4.2 dB (based on the result of BMS loudness study). This means in this version, custom BMS will play at 62% volume of the original. I think this is good, because this means less clipping and more dynamics. Please turn up your volume!

  Feedback is welcome! Please tweet to @bemusegame.

v1.0.0-beta.28 — Native gamepad/MIDI support, detailed accuracy report (2015-12-04)

New features

• Experimental support for native gamepad and MIDI input.

  A common problem with using keyboard and joystick-to-keyboard softwares is that the keypresses has to go through the operating system’s—then the browser’s—event queue. In some cases, this causes input to be delayed (especially on a Mac when mashing many buttons).

  Thanks to the new technologies in HTML5, Web Gamepad API and Web MIDI API, you should now be able to play Bemuse with your game controller or MIDI controller without extra joystick-to-keyboard software. You’ll need to set up the key mapping before playing with your controller.

  This technology is still very new and experimental, and support varies between browser, OS, and controller. For instance, on my Mac, Google Chrome detects the DJ DAO controller but not the JKOC controller, whereas Firefox only detects the JKOC controller, but not DJ DAO. In short, it may not work.

• Detailed accuracy report: In the result screen, click on the accuracy number, and a panel showing the detailed play statistics is displayed, including a histogram of accuracies, number of EARLY/LATE hits, and other statistical information.

  

  Other statistical information include:

  • The mean which represents the trueness of your note hits to the musical score.
  • The S.D. which represents the precision of your note hits.
  • The median which can be compared to the mean to determine the skewness (although not technically correct).

• What’s new? Never miss out on new updates to Bemuse. When a new version is released, a “What’s new?” bubble appears in the title screen. Clicking on it will display the change log.

Fixes

• Fixed a problem where modifier keys (Ctrl, Alt) are captured by the web browser, and thus interrupting the game.

Internals

• The custom automated test harness has been replaced with Karma test runner.

v1.0.0-beta.26 — Personal records (2015-11-24)

New feature

• This release displays your personal records in the music selection screen.

v1.0.0-beta.27 — Eyecatch, background image (2015-11-24)

News

forgetalia, a pilot bmson package, is now available for playing online!

Follow @forgetalia for more updates.

New features

• Eyecatch and background images are now supported for bmson files.
  • If the eyecatch and background image is not specified (or using BMS files), Bemuse will try to load eyecatch_image.png and back_image.png.
• Sharing on Twitter will now attach the server URL.

Improvements

• Make the game display smoother in non-native resolution. Please play at 1280x720 resolution for best experience.

• The music list will automatically scroll to the selected song after playing.

• Changed the wording in the tutorial to make it more encouraging…

  

• The long scratch note will now automatically end at the moment the end of the scratch note reaches the judgment bar. This does not affect gameplay; only visual.

v1.0.0-beta.25 — Rudimentary bmson 1.0 support (2015-11-10)

New features

• Rudimentary bmson 1.0 support. This release makes Bemuse support the bmson 1.0 structure. It supports only what is supported in bmson v0.21.

  The following are supported:

  • New, snake_cased key names, and other key name changes
  • info.resolution
  • info.chart_name
  • info.subtitle
  • info.subartists

  The following are NOT yet supported:

  • Mix notes
  • Background images
  • New sound slicing algorithm (unfortunately, requires non-trivial change across codebases)

その他

• Refactored the old UI data flow system (imperative <Binding />) into a higher-order component. #211
• Made the music-select-store code easier to understand. #211

v1.0.0-beta.24 (2015-11-08)

Bugfixes

• Fixed sound cutting problem when playing bmson files. In previous version, sometimes there’s a clicking sound at the end of a sliced keysound. As of writing, Google Chrome is not very accurate when it comes to playing and stopping sounds. I guess that it rounds to the next buffer loop before stopping. The fix is to manually stop the sound by setting fading its volume down to 0 at a precise time.
• Fixed graphics blending problem. Related issue: pixijs/pixi.js#2188

その他

• Updated code style to use eslint-config-bemuse, which is based on feross/standard code style, but is less strict.

v1.0.0-beta.23 — view personal records (2015-11-03)

New feature

• Personal records. If you are signed in, you should be able to see your personal record in the music selection screen.

This section is for developers

• Node 5. The codebase has been migrated to work with Node.js version 5.
• Hot Module Replacement. Developing this game will be much easier with hot reloading. It is now possible to tweak the user interface code and have the new code injected. See this awesome talk if you haven’t.
• Refactored online system. The code for online system has been heavily refactored. It is very far from perfect, and we lose data caching ability (in exchange with simpler code). Caching (and cache invalidation) is a hard problem and would need dedicated effort to implement it in the right way.

v1.0.0-beta.22: Faster loading and internal stuffs (2015-09-08)

This release contains mainly chore work to the game’s codebase and other minor stuff.

Improvements

• Faster loading. Bemuse will now download 2 package files simultaneously. This should result in faster package downloads.

Advanced stuffs

• Allow server query string to be used instead of the more verbose BEMUSE_MUSIC_SERVER.

Internals

• The markdown parser has switched to use markdown-it library.
• The markdown will be parsed like GFM, which means line breaks will create a new line when displayed.
• Changed file names and CSS class names to be consistent with JSX class names across the codebase.
• The bmson related code has been moved to bmson project, to be incorporated into bemuse-indexer, and subsequently, bemuse-tools, in order to give bmson support to these tools.
• Update isparta relying on a older version of webpack that uses an incompatible regenerator, causing build errors on the CI.

v1.0.0-beta.21 (2015-09-08)

A new feature

• The game will now display whether you pressed the keys too early or too late.

v1.0.0-beta.20: Options Screen Improvements (2015-08-23)

New features

• Audio latency compensation now available. Just go to options screen and click the “Calibrate” button.
• You can now set the speed directly inside the options screen.

v1.0.0-beta.19: #bmson (2015-08-23)

bmson supported

• Experimental support for bmson notechart, a new notechart format that will hopefully make authoring notecharts for rhythm games much, much easier. Please read the full announcement here.

v1.0.0-beta.18: Two keys for the turntable! (2015-08-10)

Improvements

• Some people have been requesting this, so I’m glad to announce that it’s now possible to assign 2 keys to the turntable.
• Performance improvements in the music selection and options screen.

v1.0.0-beta.16: 5-keys BMS support (2015-08-04)

New features

• 5-keys BMS support added.

  This release of Bemuse allows playing of 5-keys BMS files. 5-keys BMS charts are highlighted in green.

  

  It is only basic support, and the game will still display as 7 keys. However, when 5 keys BMS is detected, we perform column adjustments based on scratch position, according to this table:

  Scratch Position	左の皿	B1	B2	B3	B4	B5	B6	B7	右の皿
  Left	◎	1	2	3	4	5			–
  Disabled	–		1	2	3	4	5		–
  Right	–			1	2	3	4	5	◎

  As a result, these 5-keys charts on the default music server becomes playable:

  • CHICKEN for the WIN
    • 5 SUMMONED
    • 5 BUFFED
    • 5 ENRAGED
  • 僕たちの旅とエピロ ー グ。
    • normal
  • 가짜/인형/술사/이야기
    • 5Keys Normal
    • 5Keys Hyper

Internals

• The JavaScript ecosystem is evolving fast, and we need to keep updating our dependencies to the latest version, in order to reap the most benefits from modern web technologies. Notable changes:
  • We migrated to Pixi.js v3, which should be “faster and better in almost every way!”
  • Babel, the JavaScript transpiler we use has been upgraded from ^4.3.0 to ^5.8.20
  • And a lot of other dependencies.

• The background image has been moved out of the game layer, and is now managed via the DOM.

v1.0.0-beta.15 (2015-07-27)

A little improvement

• You can now see your own ranking in the music selection screen.

v1.0.0-beta.14.1 (2015-07-22)

Fixed a bug

• Fixed a small bug where you cannot sign in / create a new account in the result screen, because keystrokes handled by the game subsystem instead of the user interface.

v1.0.0-beta.14: Online Ranking System (2015-07-22)

New features

• Online Ranking System! A preliminary¹ ranking system, powered by Parse.

Improvements

• The Custom BMS dialog will now pop up automatically when you drag something over the “Custom BMS” button in music selection screen.

¹ By preliminary, I really mean it. While it should work fine, the online scoreboard system may need to go through several refinements. If necessary, the whole scoreboard may be cleared at any time before v1.0.0 final is released. Nevertheless, I would really love for you to try them out and give feedback.

v1.0.0-beta.13 — Offline Support (2015-06-18)

This release brings offline support (and other small fixes). Now you can play Bemuse while being completely offline.

New stuff

• Offline support added. It is made possible through a new HTML5 technology, Service Worker, which allows web application to manage all network resources (and more).

  • HTTPS is Required — Service workers only work when using HTTPS, so you need to go to https://bemuse.ninja instead of http://bemuse.ninja.
  • Browser support is very limited, as this technology is new. As of writing, only Google Chrome and Opera works. For an up-to-date status, check out the website Is ServiceWorker Ready?

その他

• Added preliminary documentation about Bemuse's BMS support and running your own music server.
• The sky background has been removed from the touch gameplay screen. It has been found to have caught frame rate drops in iOS.
• Added a disclaimer when playing a non-official music server.
• Fixed a bug where the game fails to load BMS files with special characters from the server. This is due to it not being properly URL-encoded, which makes files like #another.bms fail to load. ddb13eb

v1.0.0-beta.11 — Custom BMS now supported (2015-05-18)

This release brings the custom BMS support, and other various bug fixes and improvements.

New big feature

• Custom BMS Support

  We are excited to announce that you can now play custom BMS songs in Bemuse, right in the browser.

  For those who don't know what BMS is, it is a playable song format for rhythm games. Every year, hundreds of songs are created in this format, and can be played in any BMS player, and Bemuse is just one of them. You can read about the history of BMS from this excellent article, “What is BMS?”

  Currently, we only support Google Chrome. In the music selection screen, click on the Play Custom BMS button and drag a BMS folder into the drop area.

  

  Then the song will be added to the top of the music list.

  

  Now you can play that song like any online songs! I think we now really have a cross-platform BMS player¹.

その他

• Fixed the problem where Bemuse refuses to read data from some music server. These servers report that the metadata is just a "plain text data" (as opposed to the expected "JSON data").
• New songs are now sorted in reverse-chronological order.
• Fixed bug where some keysounds failed to load when filename has wrong capitalization (for example, #WAV Piano-001.ogg is declared where the actual filename is piano-001.ogg).
• Subtle changes to how freestyle sounds (sounds played when pressing buttons without hitting a note) are played. See #186 for more discussion.

¹ As it has been pointed out, this statement isn’t entirely accurate. Bemuse is not the first cross-platform BMS player. But to the best of our knowledge, it is the first one that is readily playable without having to compile from source on non-major platform and offers native support for BMS. We apologize for any misconception.

v1.0.0-beta.9.2 (2015-05-08)

Improvements

• Newly-added songs are now at the top of the song list.
• Twitter account is linked from the title screen. Follow @bemusegame on Twitter.
• YouTube videos are added to the Information tab of songs that has a music video.

v1.0.0-beta.8 (2015-05-07)

Improvements

• Songs are now sorted by difficulty of the easiest chart.

  From the play statistics, we have seen that, after finishing the Tutorial, most people start playing the next song in the list. Unfortunately, it was a hard song.

  Starting from this version, the game will show the song with lowest difficulty level first. This should help you find an easy song to play. Enjoy!

v1.0.0-beta.7 (2015-05-07)

Two modes

• The game is split into two modes. Keyboard mode for beginners and O2Jam players, and BMS mode for existing LR2 and IIDX players.
  • The keyboard settings are now separate between these two modes.
  • In keyboard mode, the default key settings are [S][d][f][space][j][k][l]. There are no scratch lanes.
  • In BMS mode, there is a scratch lane and the key settings are (Shift)[Z][s][X][d][C][f][V].

v1.0.0-beta.6 (2015-05-07)

Improvements

• Error popups may now be closed (by double-clicking them).

Bugfixes

• Fixes an occasional bug where an error popup appears when the game fails to synchronize the time with the server.
• Fixes a strange bug where an error popup appears when you push the Esc button to quit the game.

v1.0.0-beta.5.2 (2015-05-05)

Internals

This release makes the game synchronizes the time with a time synchronization server. More info on that will be published in later version.

v1.0.0-beta.4 (2015-04-29)

Improvements

• Added About page.
• Check for supported browser before entering game.
• Start the game when player releases the start button (instead of when pressing). This fixes the keypress delay issue on Mac OS X and helps player concentrate more on the start button.

v1.0.0-beta.3 (2015-04-29)

So many things from previous releases that I didn't even bother counting them. Just see the commit logs.

v0.11.0 (2015-03-22)

A lot of new, big things!

OMG! The game is now working!

• Game is now playable.
  • Only 1 player and 7k+1 mode.
  • Speed, keyboard mapping, and audio latency is still hardcoded.
  • BMS url configurable via ?bms query parameter.

Internals

• Isparta is used to perform code coverage instrumentation.
• Documentation is revamped to Sphinx style, and is published to http://bemuse.readthedocs.org/.

v0.10.1 (2015-02-20)

Game implementation progress

• Game loader is implemented to download everything needed for the game (song, game engine, skin) #94
• Random notes are generated to test the display. #92, #93

Infrastructure stuff

• webpack configuration have been tweaked
  • Use absolute path to filter module instead of regular expressions — more reliable environment #91
• Babel is used instead of the now-obsolete 6to5. #95
• Istanbul is configured to ignore Babel runtime code. #96

v0.8.0 (2015-02-11)

Internals

• co (dependency) has been updated to latest version. #88
• Module loading progress has been implemented. Since the game code may be quite large it is a good idea to to show a progress bar. #89

v0.7.0 (2015-02-04)

Game implementation progress

• Support for || and && operators in Scintillator added, so more complex expression may be used.
• Auto-Synchro project started #87 — to study how to calibrate audio-video offset and audio+input latency. #85

Internals

• Bluebird is now used instead of prfun for Promises implementation, since Bluebird seems to be more actively developed. #86

v0.5.0 (2015-02-03)

Game implementation progress

• Animations in skins are now possible, thanks to the keytime project. #84

v0.4.0 (2015-02-02)

Game implementation progress

• Skins compilation changed from a simple Makefile to a Gulp script. #82
• Masking feature added to <group> object in the skin. #83

Infrastructure stuff

• Coveralls.io is integrated with this project. When there are pull requests, Coveralls will tell you how the pull-request affect the code coverage. #81

v0.3.1 (2015-02-02)

Internals

• Asset hashing have been enabled. This means each time a different JavaScript file name will be generated, based on the contents. #80
  • This prevents problem when some cached JavaScript files are the old version and doesn't work with the boot script AND/OR other JavaScript files.

v0.3.0 (2015-02-01)

Game implementation progress

• Scintillator is the biggest addition to this game. It is a game skinning engine based on XML and Pixi.js. #77

Internals

• 6to5 has been updated.
• Code coverage improved.

v0.2.1 (2015-02-01)

Game implementation progress

• Pixi.js is added to the project just to make sure it works in our build infrastructure.
• Bemuse is the official name of this game. BEAT☆MUSIC☆SEQUENCE will be the subtitle.
• Windows build support added so my teammate (who uses Windows) can collaborate, as well as others who use Windows.

v0.1.2 (2015-01-17)

A lot has happened.

Game implementation progress

• Cachier: Large blobs can now be cached inside IndexedDB. This should make it easy to implement offline playback.
• Sampling Master: Sounds can be loaded and played using Web Audio API.
• BMS: Basic BMS parsing has been implemented.
• Technical Demo: A demo of BMS parsing and playing sound has been added to the "Coming Soon" page.

Set up the infrastructure for success

• Automated Code Reviews: Whenever a pull request is opened, Travis will check your code against jshint and jscs and writes a comment on the pull request.
• Automatic Deployments: Once a new version is released, a deployment to GitHub pages is made.

v0.0.0 (2014-12-26)

This is v0.0.0. Right now, this game cannot do anything (at all!), but I just finished setting up the infrastructure. Took me five days!

Project setup progress

• Decide on which build tool to use: Gulp + webpack + Jasmine.
• Set up linting rules and pre-commit hooks.
• Setup Travis CI and Code Climate with Code Coverage.
• Set up testing infrastructure.
• Write brief project plan and README.md (which will evolve over time).